Chapter IX: The Modern Orators (4)

With what strength of argument, with what powers of the
fancy, with what emotions of the heart, doth he assault and
subjugate the whole man; and at once, captivate his reason,
his imagination, and his passions. To effect this, must be
the utmost effort of the most improved state of human
nature. Not a faculty that he possesses is here unemployed;
not a faculty that he possesses but is here exerted to its
highest pitch. All his internal powers are at work; all his
external, testify their energies.

Within, the memory, the fancy, the judgment, the passions,
are all busy. Without, every muscle, every nerve, is
exerted; not a feature, not a limb, but speaks. The organs
of the body, attuned to the exertions of the mind, through
the kindred organs of the hearers, instantaneously vibrate
those energies from soul to soul.

Notwithstanding the diversity of minds in such a multitude,
by the lightning of eloquence, they are melted into one
mass; the whole assembly, actuated in one and the same way,
become, as it were, but one man, and have but one voice.
The universal cry is--"_let us move against Philip_--LET US
FIGHT FOR OUR LIBERTIES--+LET US CONQUER OR DIE!+"

THEODORE ROOSEVELT INAUGURAL ADDRESS[20] (1905)

My Fellow Citizens: No people on earth have more cause to
be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently, in no
spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with
gratitude to the Giver of Good, who has blessed us with the
conditions which have enabled us to achieve so large a
measure of well-being and happiness.

To us as a people it has been granted to lay the
foundations of our natural life in a new continent. We are
the heirs of the ages, and yet we have had to pay few of
the penalties which in old countries are exacted by the
dead hand of a bygone civilization. We have not been
obliged to fight for our existence against any alien race;
and yet our life has called for the vigor and effort
without which the manlier and hardier virtues wither away.

Under such conditions it would be our own fault if we
failed, and the success which we have had in the past, the
success which we confidently believe the future will bring,
should cause in us no feeling of vainglory, but rather a
deep and abiding realization of all that life has offered
us; a full acknowledgment of the responsibility which is
ours; and a fixed determination to show that under a free
government a mighty people can thrive best, alike as regard
the things of the body and the things of the soul. Much has
been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from
us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves--and
we can shirk neither. We have become a great nation, forced
by the fact of its greatness into relation to the other
nations of the earth, and we must behave as becomes a
people with such responsibilities.

Toward all other nations, large and small, our attitude
must be one of cordial and sincere friendship. We must show
not only in our words but in our deeds that we are
earnestly desirous of securing their good will by acting
toward them in a spirit of just and generous recognition of
all their rights.

But justice and generosity in a nation, as in an
individual, count most when shown not by the weak but by
the strong. While ever careful to refrain from wronging
others, we must be no less insistent that we are not
wronged ourselves. We wish peace; but we wish the peace of
justice, the peace of righteousness. We wish it because we
think it right, and not because we are afraid. No weak
nation that acts rightly and justly should ever have cause
to fear, and no strong power should ever be able to single
us out as a subject for insolent aggression.

Our relations with the other powers of the world are
important; but still more important are our relations among
ourselves. Such growth in wealth, in population, and in
power, as a nation has seen during a century and a quarter
of its national life, is inevitably accompanied by a like
growth in the problems which are ever before every nation
that rises to greatness. Power invariably means both
responsibility and danger. Our forefathers faced certain
perils which we have outgrown. We now face other perils the
very existence of which it was impossible that they should
foresee.

Modern life is both complex and intense, and the tremendous
changes wrought by the extraordinary industrial development
of the half century are felt in every fiber of our social
and political being. Never before have men tried so vast
and formidable an experiment as that of administering the
affairs of a continent under the forms of a democratic
republic. The conditions which have told for our marvelous
material well-being, which have developed to a very high
degree our energy, self-reliance, and individual
initiative, also have brought the care and anxiety
inseparable from the accumulation of great wealth in
industrial centers.

Upon the success of our experiment much depends--not only
as regards our own welfare, but as regards the welfare of
mankind. If we fail, the cause of free self-government
throughout the world will rock to its foundations, and
therefore our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the
world as it is today, and to the generations yet unborn.

There is no good reason why we should fear the future, but
there is every reason why we should face it seriously,
neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems
before us, nor fearing to approach these problems with the
unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright.

Yet, after all, though the problems are new, though the
tasks set before us differ from the tasks set before our
fathers, who founded and preserved this Republic, the
spirit in which these tasks must be undertaken and these
problems faced, if our duty is to be well done, remains
essentially unchanged. We know that self-government is
difficult. We know that no people needs such high traits of
character as that people which seeks to govern its affairs
aright through the freely expressed will of the free men
who compose it.

But we have faith that we shall not prove false to memories
of the men of the mighty past. They did their work; they
left us the splendid heritage we now enjoy. We in our turn
have an assured confidence that we shall be able to leave
this heritage unwasted and enlarged for our children's
children.

To do so we must show, not merely in great crisis, but in
every-day affairs of life, the qualities of practical
intelligence, of course, of hardihood, and endurance, and,
above all, the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which
made great the men who founded this Republic in the days of
Washington; which made great the men who preserved this
Republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln.

EDWIN G. LAWRENCE OUR COUNTRY[21] (1912)

MR. TOASTMASTER, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: In that long ago,
that age just following the period when darkness covered
the face of the earth, that age when God dispelled that
darkness by issuing his fiat, "Let there be light," we are
told in the Good Book that God followed the birth of the
light with the creation of man, that He breathed the breath
of life into his nostrils and that man became thereby a
living soul. With the entrance of divine breath into the
senseless clay, with the awakening of the soul of man,
there came the realization of three spiritual facts: the
belief in God, the love of home, and the devotion to
country.

Nowhere in this vast universe does a conscious being exist
who does not, in his heart, believe in God. Traverse the
wilds of darkest Africa, enter the densest jungles of that
great continent, and you will find that all its human
inhabitants have some conception of God. In the remotest
isles of the Pacific, among the cannibals who devour the
flesh of their victims, is found evidence of the belief in
the existence of God, although the evidence may be nothing
more than the setting up of a symbol of wood or stone that
typifies to the poor savage the Being he worships. Even the
blasphemer, who, with the words of his mouth, denies the
Almighty who created him, will, in his secret soul, hear
the still small voice, the reflex of that great Creator,
whisper unto him, "I am the Lord thy God."

The love of home is universal. Be that home a hovel or a
palace, if the heart be there, happiness will be its
companion. Love of home often exists where the home is only
in the fancy, only in the heart that longs and hungers for
its blessings. That sweet singer who sang of "Home, sweet
home" was a wanderer on the face of the earth, and
possessed that home only in his dreams. No matter how pomp
and power may elevate us, no matter how our erring feet may
carry us astray, still in our hearts will echo the refrain:

'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.

As we are gathered within this palatial building, around
these well-laden tables, under the splendor of these
electric lamps, how many of you at the sound of the word
"Home" think of the little cottage perched upon the hill,
or nestling down in the valley, where, seated at the plain
wooden table, the room faintly lighted by a tallow candle,
you have eaten your humble meal, blessed by the spirit that
ever sanctifies the home? How many of you at this moment
are, in fancy, back in the dear old county of Greene? How
many of you trace the winding brook climb the hills, till
the fields, or sit within the holy confines of the House of
God, humble in its man-made structure but magnificent with
the glory of His presence?

Home is a thought, a dream, a wish, the longing of the soul
for the attainment of the heaven upon earth; and because
man keeps before him the vision of what he would have his
home, and sees not the materiality of its reality, he
conceives his home, no matter where it may be placed, to be
the best on earth. That beautiful writer, weak man, and
luckless wanderer, Oliver Goldsmith, thus expresses the
idea I would convey to you:

But where to find that happiest spot below
Who can direct, when all pretend to know?
The shudd'ring tenant of the frigid zone
Boldly proclaims that happiest spot his own.
Extols the treasures of his stormy seas,
And his long nights of revelry and ease:
The naked negro, panting at the Line,
Boasts of his golden sands and palmy wine,
Basks in their glare, or stems the tepid wave,
And thanks his gods for all the good they gave.
Such is the patriot's boast where'er he roam,
His first, best country, ever is at home.

What does the word country signify? It means the same to
the Russian on the frozen Volga; the German on the castled
Rhine; the Irish on the shores of the River Lee, listening
to "those bells of Shandon"; to the English on the Thames,
that little stream pregnant with the history of a world;
and to the American by the shores of the Hudson, the
Columbia or the Mississippi. To all men, in all climes, "my
country" means the land of my fathers, or the land of my
choice; the place of sacred memories, of strong endeavors
and of fervent hopes. Be that country the rock-ribbed land
of Scotland, the sands of Africa, the vine-clad hills of
France, the plains, the valleys and the mountains of
America, it is "my country" to her sons and daughters. No
matter what may be the language spoken, no matter what may
the natural formation of the landscape, be it Holland with
her dykes and ditches or Switzerland with her home in the
clouds, no matter what may be the color of her children, be
they white, yellow, black or brown, to them she is their
mother, and they adore her.

All this and more "our country" means to us Americans. She
means more to us than most lands can mean to their
children, because she offers us greater opportunities for
advancement in education, more religious, social and
political liberty, and instills into us an appreciation of
the necessity of working for the uplifting of mankind.

While laboring to uplift ourselves and our fellows, we
should keep ever in mind the first tenth of that Decalogue
given to the children of Israel for their guidance and
government, and which is as necessary to our national
preservation as it was to their national formation. That
commandment states "Thou shalt have no other gods before
Me"; and wherever that divine order was broken, the peoples
so breaking it, went down to destruction. When Athens
turned from her high ideals of progress and liberty she
became the vassal of Macedonia and passed out of existence
as an independent state. When the Emperor Augustus mounted
the throne of the world-power of Rome, the people of that
vast empire were slaves to sensuality and luxury, and from
that moment, when her greatness appeared fixed for all
times, her decline began. Let America pause and ponder as
she stands on the brink of that gulf wherein lie buried
Israel, Assyria, Carthage, Greece, and Rome, for unless she
turns from the false god Mammon, and returns to the worship
of the Lord God, she will as surely be plunged into the
bottomless pit as were the nations that preceded her in
wealth and power and which she is imitating by bowing down
to and worshiping the golden calf. Let us keep before our
country the lights of truth and justice that they may guide
her from this threatening peril on to that upward and
onward path leading to the holy of holies wherein sits
enthroned the one true God--the God of Equality and of Love.

It is well to blend God, Home and Country, because the
belief in all three makes the believer, man or woman, the
patriot and the child of God. Take God out of the home and
what have we? A shelter for the body, perhaps, but a
wilderness for the spirit. Take God out of the country and
what have we? A ship of state without a compass whereby to
direct its course. Therefore, if either love of God or love
of home fails to exist in the hearts of the citizens of any
land, that part of the earth's surface will be their
habitation but it will fail to be their country. When the
patriot thinks of the nation he loves he does not picture
it as so much land, so much water, so many mountains or so
many plains. No, he sees it as he sees his flag, symbolical
of all that is dear, holy and true. It is the spirit of our
flag that we love. It is the spirit of God and the spirit
of Home that make us love our Country. Let us look to hear
as our mother, let us be to her faithful and loving
children, and may she be the better for having nurtured us
in her arms.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Our Country. God grant she may always
stand for the fulfillment of His word.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Delivered in the Virginia Convention, on a resolution
to put the commonwealth into a state of defense,
March 23, 1775.

[2] Delivered in the United States Senate, March 7, 1850,
in support of Clay's compromise resolutions. Abridged.

[3] Delivered in the Senate of the United States,
January 21, 1830. Abridged.

[4] Delivered at the Illinois Republican State Convention
at Springfield, June 16, 1858.

[5] Delivered on February 11, 1861.

[6] Delivered in Faneuil Hall, Boston, December 8, 1837.

[7] Delivered in the United States Senate,
January 21, 1861.

[8] Delivered in the United States Senate,
January 7, 1861.

[9] A city of Iberia (Spain). Captured by Hannibal in
219 B.C., in spite of Rome's warning. Hannibal's
action caused the war between Rome and Carthage.

[10] Delivered at Dartmouth College, July 27, 1853.

[11] Extract from an address delivered at the unveiling of
the Statue of the Poet, in Central Park, New York,
October 2, 1880.

[12] From Robert Burns' Elegy on Captain Matthew Henderson.

[13] Delivered in the House of Representatives,
April 28, 1874. Extract.

[14] Delivered in Washington, D. C., June 3, 1879.

[15] Delivered in Edinburgh, Scotland, March 17, 1880.

[16] Extract from an oration delivered before the President
and both Houses of Congress in the House of
Representatives at Washington, D. C., February 27, 1882.

[17] Delivered in the National Democratic Convention at
Chicago in 1896.

[18] From a sermon delivered in the Church of the Messiah,
New York City.

[19] From a sermon on "Capital vs. Labor," delivered in the
Church of the Messiah, New York City.

[20] Delivered at Washington, D. C., March 4, 1905.

[21] Delivered at the Hotel Astor, New York City, on the
occasion of the Eighth Annual Dinner of The Greene
County Society, Jan. 30, 1912.